Giovanni Baglione

The recorded working language is Italian. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are allegory, figure, history and mythological. Places of work recorded in the authority are Naples, Rome and Loreto. Works named in the authority record are Resurrection of Christ. Work by Giovanni Baglione is recorded in the collections of Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museo del Prado, Nationalmuseum, National Gallery of Canada and Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Arras.

• Name — Giovanni Baglione • Born — 1566 • Birthplace — Rome, Papal States • Died — 30 December 1643 • Place of death — Rome, Papal States • Known for — Painter and biographer of artists • Movement — Late Mannerist, Baroque • Illustration — Drawing of Saint Catherine, Carried up to Heaven by Angels, c. 1625

He was born and died in Rome, but from his own account came from a noble family of Perugia. A pupil of the obscure Florentine artist working in Rome, Francesco Morelli (not to be confused with the later French-Italian engraver Francesco Morelli), he worked mainly in Rome, initially with a late-Mannerist style influenced by Giuseppe Cesari (or the "Cavaliere d'Arpino"). After an intermezzo Caravaggesco when he was heavily influenced by the young Caravaggio in the early years of the new century, and a Bolognese-influenced phase in the 1610s, Baglione's final style became more generalized and typical of Roman Early Baroque painters such as Guercino, though always reflecting his training in the Central Italian tradition of disegno, the absence of which he criticized in the Caravaggisti. To Rudolf Wittkower, his style "vacillated between progressive trends, without absorbing them fully". He spent 1621–1622 in Mantua as the court artist of Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, where the exposure to the fabulous Gonzaga collection of Venetian paintings influenced his style. Otherwise he remained in Rome, where he was long successful in attracting commissions from the Papal court and aristocracy. His paintings have been described by the art historian Steven F. Ostrow as "extraordinarily uneven, at best, competent, and his work pales in comparison with that of many of the contemporary artists he emulated", while his "chalk and pen and ink drawings reveal a force and lyricism rarely found in his paintings". The quality of his work declined sharply in the 1630s, by which time he was in his late sixties. He had a successful career, receiving a Papal knighthood in the Supreme Order of Christ (the highest of the Papal orders) in 1606, and his long involvement with Rome's Accademia di San Luca and his biographies reveal "an artist obsessed with status". He was a member of the Accademia from 1593 until his death, and three times President. Apart from the regular later title of "first historian of the Roman Baroque", in his lifetime he was also nicknamed Il Sordo del Barozzo as he suffered from deafness. He died in Rome on 30 December 1643 at the age of 77.

• Illustration — Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Amor Vincit Omnia, c. 1602. Oil on canvas, 156.5 × 113.3 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. Baglione's best known painting, Sacred Love and Profane Love (or The Divine Eros Defeats the Earthly Eros and other variants), was a direct response to Caravaggio's Amor Vincit Omnia (1601–02). Baglione's painting exists in two versions, the earlier in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (c. 1602–03) and the later in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Both show Sacred Love as an angelic winged figure interrupting a 'meeting' between Cupid (Profane Love), shown as in the Caravaggio as a smaller and naked winged figure, and the Devil. In the later Rome version the devil is portrayed with the caricatured features of Caravaggio, while in Berlin his face is turned away. Both paintings were commissioned by members of the Giustiniani family in Rome: the Caravaggio by the banker and collector Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, and Baglione's riposte by his brother Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani. What in the two brothers was probably a good-natured family joke reflected serious rivalry between the artists concerned. Baglione was greatly influenced by the style of Caravaggio during this period of his career, and the younger artist and his circle had claimed, with some justification, that Baglione had plagiarized his style. In late August 1603 Baglione filed a suit for libel against Caravaggio, Orazio Gentileschi, Ottavio Leoni, and Filipo Trisegni in connection with some unflattering poems circulated around Rome over the preceding summer, which he appears to have been correct in attributing to Caravaggio's circle. Baglione had recently completed his large altarpiece of the Resurrection of Jesus for Il Gesu, the main church of the Jesuit Order (it was much later replaced), and claimed that Caravaggio was jealous of this important commission. Caravaggio's testimony during the trial as recorded in court documents is one of the few documented records of his thoughts about art and his contemporaries. It included statements that: "I don't know any painter who thinks Giovanni Baglione is a good painter", the Resurrection altarpiece was "clumsy [goffa]" and "it's the worst he's done, and I haven't heard a single painter praise the said painting." Caravaggio was found guilty and held in the Tor di Nona prison for two weeks after the trial, but far from clearing his reputation, Caravaggio's damaging remarks have dominated the critical assessment of Baglione ever since, although Gentileschi's evidence conceded that he was a "first-class painter". Years after Caravaggio's early death in 1610, Baglione was his first biographer, and though he gave him much praise for his early works, his dislike is evident, concentrated on the younger artist's life and character and his later paintings; this verdict, especially as regards the man, has also remained highly influential.

• Illustration — The Ecstasy of St Francis, 1601, Art Institute of Chicago • Illustration — Saint Sebastian healed by an angel, c. 1603, private collection • Illustration — Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1608, Galleria Borghese • Illustration — Polyhymnia (from the series Apollo and the Muses, 1621-1623) • Illustration — Cupid beating Venus, 1600-1615, Zeri priv. col. • Illustration — Hercules at the crossroads, 1640-1642, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

Giovanni Baglione is recorded as painter, historian, writer, architectural drafter and draftsperson.